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Freedoms

Freedoms

Rushdie
and Husain: Casualties of an Immature Democracy : Freedom of expression includes the freedom to
offend or hurt organized groups, hurt public figures, hurt all those who are in
the positions of influence, hurt all those institutions which are powerful and
influential, hurt our histories, our legacies, and our past. Freedom of
expression cannot come in doses of moderation, like what the Indians want us to
believe.

Go
back Rushdie, You are not welcome here: Though we are the ‘greatest country’ with the
‘greatest culture’ we are an insecure lot.In our country, we have a right
to believe in blind theories, gobbledygook stories, and mystical
interpretations of the working of the nature.And if for some reason, you seem to question them or speak against them,
we have a right to threaten you, shut you up, and if needed, throw you in
prison.

Run
away from Indian Flag: Why give the flag to us when you can prosecute us with such silly
allegations.Instead, please take the
flag back; put it in a museum.Keep it
on a pedestal, or keep it chains, but please keep it away from the reach of the
mere mortals like us.We don’t want the
National Flag in our lives if we are to be constantly afraid of silly
prosecutions and frivolous litigations.

M F
Husain: Nude Saraswati: The way Indians got familiar with Ramayana through Ramanand Sagar’s
version on TV, the new generation Hindus now became familiar with a sari-draped
ultraconservative version of their goddesses.But some of us know that Ramanand Sagar’s version is not the only
version of Ramayana.Many contemporary
artists continued to depict their goddesses in nude but these figurines never
entered the common man’s homes as deity figures.

Understanding
why M F Husain might have painted Nude Hindu Gods: For all we know, may be MF Husain was
doing what every other artisan in India did for centuries – conform to the
practices already in vogue, and not deviate from those practices by a lot.It is a common practice that an artisan who works
on Hindu temples sculpts Hindu goddesses in nude and then goes to work on a
mosque to etch Arabic texts onto the walls.

Scrap
the Insane Laws, Immediately: There are many anachronistic, insane and stupid laws in this
country.The fact that they have never
been used, or that they are rarely used, or that they have been used with
discretion is not a good enough reason for such laws to exist.No individual can stand up against the
onslaught of a committed group which uses such insane laws to prosecute and
persecute him.

MF
Husain Dies: Intolerance Wins, India Loses: A basic requirement of a free nation
is that it should allow expression of conflicting and dissenting ideas. And
those who express those ideas should be protected from persecution, even when
the targets are sacred symbols of majority or minority groups.

Freedom
from persecution:
Though High Court ruling clearly exonerated MF Husain of any wrongdoing, Indians
kicked out MF Husain by hounding him with thousands of cases, generating
hundreds of arrest warrants against him.A freedom sanctioned by the state of India also includes freedom from
such frivolous and unnecessary prosecution, from such arrest warrants in each
and every Indian city.

'You
hate me, I arrest you': Words like hatred, anger, love, happy, cannot be and should not be
legalized.The fact that such words,
like ‘hatred’, appear in our Indian Penal Code with punishments of imprisonment
for life is quite ridiculous.Indians are now hounding its authors and
artists slapping them with innumerable number of cases in each city of India so
that they are forced to flee the nation.

Scrap
sedition laws: ‘Whoever,
by words, either spoken or written, attempts to excite disaffection towards the
Government established by law in India, shall be punished with imprisonment for
life.’That includes almost every
criticism of India.Almost anyone who is
unhappy with the way India is performing and therefore goes about criticizing
it can be charged with sedition.

Khap
the crap: Khap
panchayats should have no jurisdiction over who an individual can marry, what
an individual wants to do with his/her life.No amount of greatest culture and tradition can be used as a justification
to deprive an individual of his fundamental rights.And the modern India has a responsibility to
emancipate these common Indian men and women from the oppression of the
majority carried out in the name of tradition and culture.

Freedom
from Religion: What
Indians need is freedom from religion; freedom from its foolishness, from its
ignorance, from its zealotry.We need
freedom from its imbecility, its bigotry and its intolerant imposition of
values and virtues onto us.Religious
people are free to practice any idiocy in their lives, but they have no right
to impose it onto us, by any law or by any decree of the land.

Thou
shall not eat beef!: Banning beef in Karnataka is a clear case of Hindu majority, dominated
by upper caste version of Hinduism where cow is a sacred animal, imposing its
will on other religions and lower-caste Hindus.Beef is a food to many people just like chicken or mutton.State has no right to impose what people of
this country can eat or not eat.Making an animal sacred is not the domain of a
secular country.

MF
Husain takes Qatar Nationality: India has a long standing tradition of depicting their gods
in nude.Indian temples are galore with
various gods and goddesses in erotic postures and in some temples, the
depictions are downright pornographic where more than one multiple partners are
making love.

Unban
banned books: So
far, more than 54 books have been banned by various Indian governments. India
bans books, plays and movies at the throw of a hat without debate, discussion
or reason. India has to grow up. One of
the sad outcomes of that growing up is to deal with things that are unpleasant.

Gujarat
bans Jaswant’s book on Jinnah: Books are not billboards that a person would look at
involuntarily. Someone would read a book only because he wants to, it cannot be
forced upon, and it would never be inadvertent either. An Indian citizen should
be allowed to choose any book he wants to read. No government should think it
is protecting its citizens from reading wrong stuff.

Homosexuality
is not a crime anymore: The court observes: “Moral indignation, however strong, is not a valid
basis for overriding individuals’ fundamental rights of dignity and privacy.
Constitutional morality must outweigh the argument of public morality, even if
it be the majoritarian view”.India took
150 years to reverse a law that criminalized an activity which is now
considered natural though different from the majority point of view.

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